1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the art of AM radio broadcasting and, more particularly, to providing adaptive compensation for carrier signal phase distortion caused by amplitude modulation of a RF carrier signal.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The U.S. patents to H. I. Swanson U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,952,890 and 5,132,637 disclose amplitude modulators for use in AM radio broadcasting wherein the modulator serves to generate an amplitude modulated signal by selectively turning on and off a plurality of RF amplifiers to produce amplitude modulation. Each of the RF amplifiers includes a plurality of switching transistors, each of which may take the form of a MOSFET transistor, connected together in a bridge circuit. It is known that amplitude modulating an RF carrier signal with an amplitude varying signal will result in the output carrier signal being shifted in phase from that of the input carrier signal by an amount that varies with the magnitude of the amplitude varying signal. This carrier phase error or distortion in the modulators results in part because the turn on and turn off delays are not constant as the gain of the amplifier is changing. This problem becomes particularly significant where such transmitters are required to pass a phase modulated signal such as stereo CQAM or digital in-band on channel (IBOC) digital radio signals.
In the prior art as illustrated herein in FIG. 1, it is known to provide some compensation for such phase distortion by pre-distorting the input. This is not an adaptive system and phase correction using this approach is limited and is load dependent. The aforesaid patent to Swanson U.S. Pat. No. 4,952,890 provides forward phase correction similar to that of FIG. 1 herein. Also, the aforementioned patent to Swanson U.S. Pat. No. 5,132,637, while employing adaptive feedback circuitry for correcting for distortions due to power supply variations, does not respond to the amplitude of the input audio signal for adaptively correcting for carrier phase distortions due to amplitude modulation of the carrier signal.
The U.S. patent to McGann U.S. Pat. No. 5,121,077 discloses an RF power amplifier wherein a sample of the output is compared with a sample of the RF drive signal with a phase detector which, in turn, drives a phase shifter to shift the phase of the signal applied to the power amplifier. However, there is no teaching of providing a correction signal to the phase shifter based on the magnitude of an amplitude varying input signal.